California: The Abortion Capital of the Nation

The NAACP denounced our “BLACK & BEAUTIFUL” billboards. “It’s a horrible approach and I think it is racist on the face of it…It’s misleading and a very, very poisonous approach to politics…They are creating an illusion that Planned Parenthood is an organization that is murdering black babies,” Ms. Huffman, President of NAACP California and NAACP National Board Member, told the Oakland Tribune.

It has been said, many many times, that “as California goes, so goes the nation.” When it comes to abortion, let’s sincerely hope not. California could be considered, by its sheer numbers, the nation’s Abortion Capital (click here for chart of state-by-state comparisons). In the latest year (2008) for which statistics are available, 214,190 abortions were committed in California, an increase of 8,760 from 2005, the last reported year. The abortion rate has increased from 26.9 to 27.6 in 20081. Taxpayers funded 80,069 abortions through through Medi-Cal the previous year.2a There are a whopping 522 abortion clinics/providers2b in the state, dwarfing even New York state’s 249 abortion facilities3 (where nearly 60% of black pregnancies are aborted–more killed than are born alive).4

The Radiance Foundation and its partnering organizations decry the killing of any innocent unborn life. No matter the race or ethnicity, abortion is a tragedy and an unnecessary violent conclusion to Life that is “unplanned”. According to the CDC, in every other state with black populations, the disproportionate impact is alarming. The black abortion rate is 3x more (up to 5x according to pro-abortion think tank Guttmacher) than the white abortion rate and 2x that of all other races combined.5

African-Americans share 38.5%6 of all abortions, nationwide, even though the racial group only comprises 13%7 of the population. This is not a black versus white issue. This is a human rights issue. With so many resources available to women and men facing unexpected pregnancies, and incredible life-affirming options available like parenthood and adoption, there’s no reason why anyone has to resort to destruction by abortion. Ninety-eight percent (98%) of cases are due to personal choice, not medical or health reasons, rape or incest.9

DEFENDING THE “RIGHT” TO KILL

Abortion is a “right” (for girls of any age) ferociously defended for any reason by Planned Parenthood and political forces that have legally denied any parental consent or notification. This has tragically been accomplished through California’s SB 1301, known as the Reproductive Privacy Act.10 Planned Parenthood and NARAL have poured millions of dollars into legal battles to keep parents completely out of a minor’s “choice”.

Typical of Planned Parenthood, they hope you don’t see the glaring hypocrisy of their propaganda, including the fact that they spend millions lobbying politicians to interfere. Apparently, families are not comprised of parents in Planned Parenthood’s world. On their same website, just paragraphs later, comes their token contradiction:

“37 states have dangerous laws that force doctors to notify or obtain the consent of a parent when a teen seeks abortion care…but these laws are especially dangerous for teens that can’t go to their parents with something as sensitive as unplanned pregnancy.” —Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California

Parents, according to Planned Parenthood, are the enemy. So any teacher, coach, or random adult can take your child (of any age under 21) without your knowledge and have STD treatments, contraception, or an abortion administered without so much as telling you it even happened. The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) brags about the legally-enforced non-parental role on its website in an appalling way:

“Clinics and health care providers may not give parents any information about their children’s medical treatment, questions or prescriptions of contraception without the child’s consent. Minors in California have the right to leave school to obtain medical treatment and/or consultation without their parents consent. Minors in California have the right to obtain an abortion without notifying their parents or any other adult. Again, California provides funding through the Family PACT program so if you or a friend needs an abortion, you can get funding for medical treatment without involving a parent or guardian.” —National Abortion Rights Action League of California

How does any effort hope to reduce unplanned pregnancy among minors without the involvement of parents? Abortion is an obscenely profitable business for Planned Parenthood, who raked in over $80 million in profit from their 324,008 nationwide abortions, as reported in their latest Annual Report. (See more about their increasing numbers.) The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a study on Abstinence-only education and found it was successfully effective. Unfortunately, due to politics, they’ve made it impossible to find the taxpayer funded study on their site. It’s available here: http://bit.ly/Abstinence-Study.

RIGHT ON TARGET

Over 50 million innocent human lives have been exterminated since 1973’s Roe v. Wade, with over 15 million of those lives disproportionately African-American. The Issues4Life Foundation, co-sponsor of TooManyAborted.com, has been sounding the alarm about Planned Parenthood’s deliberate role in the destruction of innocent life.

“The impact of abortion in the African-American community is the Darfur of America.” —Walter B. Hoye II, Issues4Life Foundation

Planned Parenthood was founded on the racist pseudoscience of eugenics and still employs that corrupt DNA today. Dr. La Verne Tolbert, an African-American author, professor and former Board Member of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, knows first hand about the nation’s largest abortion chain’s tactics. She details how they’ve targeted the black community since Congress passed the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 197012, which provided hundreds of millions of Title X funding (aka taxpayers’ money) to Planned Parenthood every year. School-based clinics (download PDF here) were their primary method of targeting low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods, by placing clinics on or near school grounds.

“Data from 2007 demonstrate that there are 146 School-based clinics in inner-city schools. Under the guise of providing health care for the underserved, these clinics are primarily designed as family planning facilities.” — La Verne Tolbert, PhD, Abstinence Educator citing data from California HealthCare Foundation.

The latest Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (SEC. 399Z1) aims to place even more School-Based Health Clinics in areas that are “underserved”–simply code for mostly black and Hispanic communities, potentially pouring billions of dollars into Planned Parenthood and its allies.13 And despite the fact that STD and HIV/AIDS rates have soared exponentially in the black community, where Planned Parenthood has existed for decades, they continue to be funded for failure.

ABORTION IS A HEALTH CARE DISPARITY

Justifying abortion typically includes emotional rhetoric about health care disparities and vague assertions of “lack of access”. On the norm, health care disparities are considered negative, and many prolife people and organizations put forth great effort to reduce them. Inexplicably, the health care disparity of higher rates of death among black unborn children is touted by the abortion industry as a benefit – a byproduct of reproductive “justice.”

The infant mortality rate is 2.4 times higher for black babies than for white children, mostly occurring among those who are under 20 and unmarried.15 Most of these tragic cases also are a result of pre-term births. Risk of preterm births, as reported in numerous global studies and the recently reported Adera study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, is significantly increased by previous induced abortions, or ITOP (Induced Termination of Pregnancy)16.

Most abortions occur in the 20-24 age group17; and, in many cases, are sought by a majority of those who have college or graduate educations. So let’s dispel the myth that simply poor black teenage girls are having abortions. Yet the “pro-choice” defense always includes a mantra about “lack-of-access” and “health care disparities”. The same individuals who “lack access” to reproductive health care manage to find it to procure an abortion. There are also hundreds of Title X funded clinics, within the state of California, that don’t perform abortions but provide all of the preventative “reproductive health care” that Planned Parenthood does, at the same cost–often free.

In 2008, nationally Hispanics had nearly the same poverty level as African-Americans, 23.2% and 24.7%, respectively. They were uninsured at far higher rates at 30.7% (14.6 million) versus 19.1% (7.3 million) rate for blacks. Yet Hispanics’ share in the national abortion total is 25%, significantly less than that of African-Americans.18 This simply proves the “lack of access” and “poverty-driving-abortion” narrative to be blatantly false.

Maternal mortality is often cited as a cause of abortions. But like every other justification, the statistics don’t line up at all. The total number of maternal deaths in 2005 was 638, compared to the 4,138,349 live births and 1.2 million abortions that occurred the same year. Used frequently as a justification for abortion, maternal mortality’s increase from 2001-2005 (which doubled for whites and blacks in this time period) is attributed to age rather than race. Maternal mortality is 5x higher (ages 35+) at a rate of 38 per 100,000 live births versus 7.4 for women 20 and younger.19

California leads the nation in killing its own via abortion. Over 200,000 annual abortions have a profound impact morally, economically, and politically.

THE ABORTION AFTERMATH

The same pro-abortion forces that fight against every common-sense pro-life legislation, also support every form of welfare targeted at minority communities–programs infamous for pushing the male out of the family equation. Abortion never mitigates poverty, but instead appears to increase it. The number of those impoverished, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is the largest number (43.6 million) in the 51 years since this data has been tracked.20 Abortion policies deteriorate the most stable element of any society: married two-parent homes. Black communities were not always plagued with today’s epidemic of fatherlessness where over 70% of all black children are born out-of-wedlock. In the 50s, according the U.S. Census Bureau, 78% of all homes in the black community were headed by married two-parent homes. Abortion denies the biological, emotional, physical, spiritual and responsible role of men. They are kicked to the periphery (noting that there are plenty of men who also choose to act recklessly and irresponsibly). No community can survive with such rampant fatherlessness, exponentially high STD/AIDS/HIV rates, and disproportionately high abortion rates. Innocent children, born and unborn, are endangered because of California’s destructive status quo.